Cvent

Cvent's Legal Department, led by general counsel Larry Samuelson, is working to push the needle on diversity within and outside of the company. Of the company's nine lawyers, four are female and five lawyers are diverse. With respect to outside counsel, the company says that a majority of billable hours on client matters are completed by diverse attorneys, by gender and race. Lisa Helem recently caught up with Samuelson for a Q&A.

What leadership roles do diverse lawyers play on Cvent's in-house team? The [legal] department is purposely nonhierarchical and the expectation is that each attorney takes on a leadership role with respect to their client-oriented work and special projects. For oversight purposes, we have an associate general counsel who is Asian American and three senior counsel, two of which are female.

What strategies has Cvent employed for ensuring that diverse attorneys have a stake in client-matter leadership responsibilities? After each project and at least every quarter, we review billable hours and quality of work product by each billable attorney. If the billed hours or complexity of work is disproportionately assigned to nondiverse attorneys, we'll strongly encourage changes to the team.

Do you track which outside counsel team members are the relationship attorneys on the matters and how much diverse attorneys bill? We specifically track and analyze all hours billed to our matters and identify whether they are by partners [versus] associates and the demographic background of each attorney. While our relationship attorneys are primarily nondiverse, their teams and the majority of billable hours are by diverse attorneys (e.g. female and/or other minorities). In our efforts to further diversify our relationship partners, when we issue RFPs, diversity numbers and inclusion efforts play a substantial role in our evaluation of submissions. We require a breakdown of both female-male, minority, and underrepresented backgrounds by associate, partner and equity vs. nonequity partner. While the numbers are important, we more heavily weigh what the firm is doing to foster an inclusive culture. We ask for descriptions of the efforts they've taken in the last 18 months to further the inclusion of females, minorities and underrepresented minorities.

Company: Cvent

General Counsel: Larry Samuelson

Company Headquarters: Tysons, VA

Number of Attorneys in the Washington, D.C., area: 5

Number of Attorneys in the U.S.: 6

Number of Attorneys Worldwide (including the D.C. area): 9 

Excerpt from Cvent's award submission: "Cvent believes that a diverse workforce can better develop products and solutions to serve the diverse event ecosystem. Over the past 18 months, the Cvent legal department has driven the company's diversity and inclusion strategy … implementing the following initiatives: conduct[ing] quarterly diversity and pay statistics analyses, encouraging recruiting at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The firm also 'requires any team of outside counsel greater than [three] to include an attorney from an under-represented class' and requires law firms responding to RFPs to disclose their diversity statistics by equity and non equity partner for minorities and women."